Midnight in Limbo City
by Pseudometapath
Summary: Picking up hitchhikers is a dangerous game, especially at midnight, and especially when the couple of kids you've just picked up seem just a little strange. DmC, One-Shot


**Author's Note: **

**I wrote this pretty late last night; I'd been reading a lot of creepy subreddits and I think that's what inspired this. Anyway...enjoy:)**

The jeep was the only car on the street as it sped along the rain-slicked concrete. The driver had his eyes on the road ahead, squinting past the sheets of rain obscuring the windshield, but the other man in the passenger's seat, the hitchhiker, was gazing detachedly out the window, watching the buildings phase in and out of his line of sight. His short, dark hair was wet, and it left a slick mark on the glass. The local variety station was crackling from the radio, indistinct and very quiet.

"Where'd you say you needed to go?" The driver's gravelly voice broke the stillness, and the passenger turned his head.

"Just take us to a motel," he said, and the man, who was tall and in his mid-thirties, with a scruffy beard and sandy hair tucked underneath a faded baseball cap, nodded.

"I was actually on my way to one across town. That alright with you?"

The reply came from the back seat. "That'll be fine. Thank you, Lewis." The other hitchhiker the man had picked up that night, who had introduced herself as Catherine, was decidedly more friendly than her companion. Lewis waved his hand.

"Naw, it's fine," he said. "I've been stuck in a rainstorm like this one more times than I can count. Couldn't just leave you two on the side of the road." He sped through an intersection. The music on the radio had faded to faint, slightly garbled static. It was oddly piercing. "Besides," he added after a moment, "it's a bad night to be out."

"Because of the rain?" Catherine asked conversationally, and the man slowly shook his head.

"No, that's not it." He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove. "It's just...one of those nights, you know?" The taps against the steering wheel fell into a steady rhythm. He seemed to stop and think for a moment before he turned to Catherine and said, "Do you ever get the feeling that there's something going on that you can't see?"

Someone who didn't know Catherine well wouldn't have seen a change in her expression, but the other passenger, now alert and watching her through the rearview mirror, saw the way her eyes widen slightly.

"What do you mean?" she asked casually, and the man wondered if he'd merely imagined the urgency in her voice.

"It's hard to explain," the man, Lewis, said as he took a right turn. "It's like...a _feeling_ I get. Sometimes I feel it when I'm alone, sometimes I feel it when I'm in a crowd. It's like a..." he grappled for the right word. "A _presence_. I feel it almost every day." He glanced at Catherine, who was watching him. He grinned suddenly, as though he'd realized all at once how ridiculous he sounded.

"But that's all crazy talk, right?" he said, and Catherine laughed a little. But then Lewis' face turned serious again.

"Funny thing is," he began, "I felt it again a little earlier tonight. It was stronger than ever. And I felt soon as _you_ stepped into my car."

The other passenger turned and saw that Lewis was looking at him.

The passenger was indifferent. "Probably your imagination," he said, and he turned back toward the window to watch the rain fall.

Lewis was a little taken aback at how weird this man he'd picked up was, but he shook his head. "I don't think I could imagine somethin' like that," he said, more to himself than to the odd strangers in his car, but Catherine had locked eyes with the other man's reflection in his side mirror. The message his gaze was sending was clear:

_He knows._

Catherine leaned forward to tell Lewis that he could let them off there, but when she looked through the windshield she could see the tiny, two story motel up the street; its bright vacancy sign was missing letters. Lewis pulled into the parking lot, gravel crunching beneath his tires as he did so. His was the only car in the parking lot.

He took the keys out of the ignition. "Last stop," he quipped, but the male passenger was already pushing his door open. Catherine hurriedly thanked Lewis and got out of his car, but Lewis stopped the other stranger with a question before he could leave.

"What's your name?" he asked, and after a moment of silence he was surprised to see the man smile.

"It's Dante," he said, and he exited the car, shutting the door with a reverberating_ slam_.

Dante caught up with Kat in the lobby. As they climbed the stairs to the second floor, room keys in hand, Dante said, casually: "Clever guy."

"Too clever. He's probably psychic and he doesn't even know it."

"Should we be worried?"

Kat shook her head as she unlocked the door to her room. "Didn't you hear the static coming from the radio? Didn't it sound a little..._off_ to you?"

Dante nodded. "Yeah..." Something clicked in his head. "You don't mean..."

Kat stepped into the room. "Yeah. _They_ were listening. That means _they_ know about him, too. We aren't the ones who should be worried." She leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms.

Dante rubbed his jaw "You think we should warn him?" he asked.

Kat shrugged. "I don't know. I doubt he would believe us, especially after you told him he was imagining things. He probably thinks we're crazy." She sighed.

"Well, better try our luck then, eh?" Dante inquired, and she agreed.

"Yeah. Tomorrow, though. I'm beat. 'Night, Dante," she said, and with that, she shut the door.

* * *

The next morning, they found Lewis' body up in a trash bin behind the laundromat next door. His head was buried in the dirt three feet away; they never found his eyes.


End file.
